“Normally, when a House plan fails in the Senate, the Senate passes its own budget plan in response. The two chambers then form a conference committee to reach a compromise that produces a budget. However, this process requires that the Senate actually approve a budget on its own. Since voting down HR1 and the Democratic plan, the Senate hasn’t done anything — which means it has gone more than 18 months without approving a budget of some kind.”

Walnut: I hate to burst your little right-wing bubble there, but Democrats did, in fact, offer a omnibus spending bill in Decemeber that would have paid for government through the end of the current fiscal year. But Republicans blocked it.

“With the budget impasse about to result in a government shutdown, the federal government has just hours to finish up its highest priorities in the discretionary-spending world. Would that be paying the troops? Staffing Social Security support centers? Prosecuting criminals in federal court? Not exactly, as the Washington Post discovered this morning. The Department of Justice will spend its remaining budget today trying to expedite approval of a deal involving one of Barack Obama’s most significant supporters and one of his informal presidential advisers:”